


The Fate Of All Things

by Dratz



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon | Pokemon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon Versions
Genre: A little bit of angst, M/M, Post-Series, also USUM spoilers, and a little bit of fluff, researchethicshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13420821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dratz/pseuds/Dratz
Summary: Faba has to come to terms with the mistakes he’s made and soon begins to doubt his future and himself. Colress, however, seems to notice that something is wrong.





	The Fate Of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> Please be warned: this piece contains spoilers for Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

The boring dawn upon his jaded eyes, weight on the shoulders, worlds beyond the mind. He watched the sun beyond the glass give rise to strength he no longer possessed. The sea was tame that day, deep blue, quiet, like panes and panes of polished glass...

Faba clenched his hands at his sides, hating the way the water moved, the way the clouds could change. He went slowly into the conservation area, an ache in his side, concealing his anger, his humility. His face in shadow, he passed the palms and the groves where the Pokemon liked to gather in the mornings close to the fences and the walkways. It had been several weeks since the day of his demotion, and he’d been set to tasks of crunching unimportant numbers and waxing the gates and pushing the carts filled with vaccines and new machines that the scientists downstairs had been left to develop without him.  


He missed his lab. He missed the silence and the predictability of loneliness, of being able to pen his findings and theories in the margins of notebooks and old folders. He was _valuable_ there, did _valuable_ work--through the night sometimes, so he didn’t have to dream. The tidied desk, the great flat screens, his drawers and his folders and the steady white spotlight crowning his head. He knew that place, he knew the steady, reliable shelter of locks and doors, compound secrecy. He missed that too. And though he loathed it, he missed Colress, whom he used to see almost daily and who would tolerate his vices and his venting and smile back--unbothered, unchanged.  


Now, all of it was changing. He was being wasted up _here_ , his brain unchallenged, his thoughts left to stray from place to place in a fog of forsaken and most resolute sadness. He hated this work--he’d done it before, so many years ago, when he’d served as an entree-level employee, when he’d the energy to run the errands and be burnt up by the light, giving everything, gritting his teeth to bare against the beat of the wretched regiment.  


He’d serve out his sentence. Quietly. Bitterly. He barely stopped to breathe, considering his past betrayal and what a mockery they’d made of him. When he’d put the Foundation before everything, when he’d scraped and clawed and fought his way, _earned_ his place, his name. Now disgraced, now discarded to the sidelines like an old and obsolete machine, they’d stripped him of his title, of his _pride_. The pain of it was written like a viral strain in his face, discrete and desolate, devouring him and whatever he stood for.  


_Fools_. All fools, the lot of them.  


He deliberated over the spreadsheets on his clipboard--documenting the recent additions to the conservation area, those who had been rehabilitated, or moved into intensive care. But the charts were dull to him, simplistic and mundane. He so badly wanted to return to his studies and the quantum and particle physics equations, the biological strains he’d memorized by heart and that he’d devoted waking hours to. Here, he couldn’t breathe--there was a heavy weight in his chest that killed the beat of his heart.

Whatever was left. Whatever there was to begin with. He wound his way through the footpaths slowly, but surely, teeth bared for all the world to see.  


It was around midday when he was checking them again--either the numbers was wrong or he’d once again have to embark on a missing Pokemon search. And those usually ended in much mutual misery. He circled the pathways, scanning, making notes in the sidelines of his charts, side-eyeing anyone who dared stray in his direction. It was at an intersection that he first spotted Colress, alone, fixated on a pair of Alolan Exeggutor.  


Then he went to glancing up the sun--as if measuring it, nodding, bowing his head to think. Then pacing and re-measuring, smiling, repeating the steps. Exactness in his movements, common sense. There were a few Aether employees tip-toeing past him with a supply cart, as if not to disturb his rituals, though he didn’t seem to care or notice. He went along, wandering the chambers, watching, listening, typing into the control panels mounted across his wrists. All of this as if in a day-dream, a daze.

Until he stopped beside Faba and nodded his head.

“Ah, good afternoon, Faba!” he said, with a sing-song note strung in his voice.  


“There’s nothing all that ‘good’ about it,” muttered Faba, under his breath.  


Colress either chose to ignore, or couldn’t hear him. He went on in his usual manner, “I’ve been looking for you--Wicke said you’d be in the conservation area. Do you have a minute?”

Faba hesitated, took a step back. He _knew_. He knew about the Rocket incident and had come here to berate him about it, just like everyone else. That was the only explanation--why else did anyone bother with him anymore? It didn’t make sense, and that hurt--that pressed on him like a hot iron and burned, lasting and illegible beneath his skin.   


Faba grit his teeth. “Well,” another uncomfortable pause, “I’m not so sure. You see, I’ve _so_ many errands to run. If it’s a _particularly_ pressing matter, I might be persuaded some other time. But for now? Oh, no, I’ve _important_ data to collect, and I’m afraid it can’t wait. Pity!” He cleared his throat, flipping through the sheets with his thumb, attempting to suppress the anger--it was a current flowing through him, welling up and overtaking. He hid his face and stormed down the walkway towards the elevator shafts. Tides rushing down, down, drowning him out in the undertow.  


All things die. All things fade. He didn’t deserve to disappear--he didn’t deserve to be swept off to the side.  


He took the lift and left the damn spreadsheets with his notes on Wicke’s desk. She wasn’t in the room--nothing moved but a speck of dust nodding up and down in the pale light, unable to settle anywhere. He stood there watching it, following the path it took through the air, dividing the place with indifferent directions.  


He supposed he and Colress would part ways from now on--the longer he thought about it, the more it made sense, and the more it stung and startled him. Because he missed measuring the space distortions on that great big machine--the one they had to calibrate again every day with the dials and the switches and the patterned panels--he missed comparing and debating notes, he missed the familiar sound of Colress’ voice as they went on explaining and contrasting areas of expertise. That was _good_ science, strong science, they worked so _well_ together--  


He turned up his nose and discarded the notion. All thing said and done, his job was different now, there was no room for such exchanges. He’d more errands to run today. And more the next. Wasting time, wasting potential, wasting every day away....

It went on like that for some time--checking boxes and pushing carts and running papers around. Faba found himself exhausted--pained and pulled about from place to place and pulled apart inside, reliving the life of someone, no- _something_ obsolete. There wasn’t much to focus on, there wasn’t much of a fire within him anymore--smoldering ashes and low, dying flames. Doused by that same, dreadful tide in his blood dragging down, down. Down to defeat til there was very little left of him, and very little left to live for.  


He mopped and waxed the walkways and ordered the reordered the folders in the mailing room. He checked the headcounts of the Psyduck and the Corsola and the Pikipek down by the pond in the conservation area and had to send off nosy visitors to his superiors. He mostly kept to himself those days, burying the hate deep through the silence, in his blood, in the hardened opal glaze of his worn and tired eyes.  


Until Colress caught him at the end of his shift in the evening. He had boarded the ferry to the terminal on Akala Island and was watching the sea from the railing. Every wave against the hull of the ferry closing in on him, crashing, closing, controlling. Overhead a lone Wingull circled the dock and cried out against a far off shore.  


“Have a minute now?” Colress spoke softly but clearly. At first Faba thought he was mocking him.  


Faba cleared his throat and looked down into the waves, the foam, the reaching darkness on every horizon over the Aether Paradise. The ferry moaned and creaked and shuddered off the dock, then picked up speed over the open water. “W-well I,” he began, not knowing what to say, or how to say it.  


Colress simply waited, always patient, always calm--calmer than the ocean could be--the rims of his glasses reflecting the last of the light. The sound of the engine was constant as the ferry skipped its way through the dusk, away from the sky, going somewhere, going gracefully, never going home.  


Faba found his anger again, walled up against his rib-cage, a terrible rotten thing, shapeless and meaningless. He curled his lip up in a half-hearted snarl, because he was fed up. Better to get over with than to drag it out, “This is about the Rockets, isn’t it? Go on, then. You can reprimand me too, but I’ll have you know it’s been done already a dozen times. _Ha!_ You can knock me down--they can _all_ knock me down--or they can _try_.” There was more to him than anyone could ever see--like the ocean, ancient things stirring below, never allowed into the light. Never surfacing. Never breathing. He steadied himself on the railing, two hands tight on the steel, weathering out a storm, sticking his nose high in the air. “So do your worst.”  


Colress shook his head, slowly, steadily. He leaned over on the railing beside him, shoulders slack, his gaze soft. “I’m not here to scold you. I mean, yes, I wanted to talk to you about that incident. But I wanted to know if you were okay.”

Faba’s voice caught in his throat as he tried to snap back. Flustered, suspicious, he fell back into a bitter sort of silence, all teeth clenched and hidden.  


Colress went on, “I know what happened, I was there that day. But you’ve been so quiet lately, and I rarely see you anymore. It’s a big change, and it must be even harder for you--”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“I know--I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” There was something about the way Colress said it that made Faba believe him--he wouldn’t have believed anyone else. The burden of it, how softly he spoke, the tender spark of something secret buried away beneath the golden glint of his eyes. Faba couldn’t make it out exactly, what that secret thing was, but he supposed it was the sort of sign that only people who are in great pain could see, as if searching among dim, dying stars.  


Silence between them for a ways, just the quick motion of the ferry as it mumbled and sprinted and crashed atop the black water. Faba loosened his grip on the railing and sighed--the sort of sighs that come from desert hills and mountain tops and vanish quickly. “Admittedly,” he said, “I didn’t expect you'd ever want to speak with me again. No one else seems to--not that I care, of course. It makes the work easier--less people to get in my way or waste my time.”

Colress smiled at him again, though that strange look was still in his eyes. “I’ve missed speaking with you, actually.”

Faba flushed a blood-like color, and turned from him, pretending to scout the horizon line. He managed to stutter out, “Y-yes well, my level of experience and scientific expertise went unmatched in the Foundation. I am--” A gutted correction, “I _was_ a wonderful Branch Chief, after all. How, er- how has your research been coming along?”

“Slower,” said Colress. “Without you there, the whole department seems smaller, I mean. And there actually aren’t that many others who know how to deal with that radiation detector.”

“They _still_ haven’t replaced it?”  


“Oh, no. It took me ages to try to walk them through the old procedure: dial, shuffle, re-dial, un-plug, shift the sliders on the side door, dial again, reboot--you remember how it went. Then you’d kick it at the very end and it would start up properly.”

“Well, it _worked_.”

“Still does,” said Colress with a grin.

“At least some things haven’t changed,” Faba could see the HeaHea City dock in the distance, dots of silver-coated concrete in the moonlight. He sighed again, slow and heavy this time, like an anchor being cast, the quiet lull before a downpour. He left the rail and started slowly to the bow of the ship, unsteady steps, for the water was rougher here and the ferry shook from side to side at times.  


Colress followed carefully behind, “Faba?”

Faba was trying to keep his tears back, cover the wounds. But the anger, the shame within him would not rest, and he would have to burn with it, choking on the thinning air, the pace of his heart throwing tantrums in his chest. There were heavy things on his mind and heavy things on his shoulders, shoving him and shutting him up in very lonely places.  


He knew he had made a mistake, he knew he had hurt many people. But he did not want to dwell much on it--for that was an awful way to live--here it was still, that wretched revelation eating him alive and revealing what he was underneath: scared and ugly and covered in deep, rough scars, some creature that had crawled out of the dirt and was scraping its way through life with vent and broken claws. Building walls, breaking bridges, wanting someplace to lay down and rest.

“This is what I meant before--when I said I was worried about you,” Colress said, who was, again, by his side.  


“Why should you care, though?” those words left Faba as a stifled sob. “I’m not important anymore.”  


“You’re important to me,” said Colress, without pause. He lay a hand slowly on Faba’s shoulder.  


At first, Faba faltered at the touch, stiffened, as though his spine was made of gun turrets left to rust out in the rain. His glasses were fogging over from inside and he raised a hand, at first, to wipe them clean--instead he reached for Colress’ hand and took it in his own.  


“You know something...” Colress spoke softly still, and somehow his voice rang out over the wind. “I’ve spent a long time researching the bond between Pokemon and their trainers--trying to figure out how to draw out their full potential. But I’ve come to realize," he was looking directly at Faba, "here in Alola, that there are meaningful bonds between people too.”

Faba said bitterly, “Nothing like that lasts though, does it? People change, I mean. Everything’s changing, Colress.”

“Of course,” said Colress. “Look up there.” He nodded up to the sky. “See the stars? They change too--they burn themselves out and then what happens? New stars are formed--you know how it works, energy is transferred, never lost. Just give yourself some time.”  


Faba tightened his grip on Colress’ hand. The ferry docked at last, slowing to a sudden stop, bobbing up and down and up and down in shallow water. Together, they made their way up the terminal, hand-in-hand still, not speaking but thinking of what could not be said with words.

The city lights were amber and collected along the shore, welcoming, staying wide awake. Salt breezes whistled through the roads, speaking gibberish, carrying fine grains of sand into the beach grass, to the groves of the towering palms. There were few people out at this hour, and even the docks were left empty and still, casting shadows outward into the ocean’s waiting arms.

“I’ll walk you to the Tide Song,” Faba offered.  


“I’d love that.” Faba could see now the display screens on Colress’ forearms flickering patterns of copper and blue, the beat of a drum, the beat of a heart, symbols and structures he never understood. “We should plan to do something together soon,” Colress was smiling again.  


“Oh?” their hands were still clasped and Faba glanced between their tangled fingers and the sidewalk straight ahead.  


“The Minior shower predicted near Mount Hokulani next week,” Colress suggested, “if you’re not too busy, that is~”

“For you?” said Faba. “I think I can make the time. Though... perhaps we could schedule something sooner as well. Erm. Since we’ve so much catching up to do.”  


“We do, don’t we? Would this Saturday work? We could take a walk through Malie Garden--or to the Outer Cape.”

“We could meet by the library,” said Faba, and Colress nodded in agreement.  


They’d come to the hotel now, a quaint but handsome building on the other side of the courtyard fountain--beyond that, the open sea. They could still hear the distant rush of black waves on the shore carrying shells and sand castles away.  


“Would ten in the morning do?” Colress took both Faba’s hands in his now, and they stood a while near the fountain.  


“That’s fine,” said Faba. He tried to hide his brightly flushed face in his collar, though Colress towered over him, and was acutely aware of it all. “And you’ll have to tell me what you were doing studying those Exeggutor. It was a week or two ago, on the conservation decks.”  


“That,” he said, “begins with an idea I had while I was developing Colress Machine 1104. But I’ll save that story for our Saturday stroll. Look here a moment, could you, Faba?” He lifted their hands together and pointed a finger out at the sky.  


Faba looked up and saw the stars circling above, not as brightly as over the open ocean--but bright enough, burning the night, lighting the way, making patterns and pictures and stories in words undiscovered, unsaid, somewhat like the various lights on Colress’ coat panels.  


“You know they’re always there, right? Even when you can’t see them, when the sun’s shining. But the sun’s just another star.”

Faba nodded slowly, his face still rosy in color. He didn’t know where Colress had learned such things, or how he’d thought of them, but he understood, in that moment at last, that Colress also understood _him_. His pain. The pain of a star flickering out, eating fire, growing cold, alone, afraid. “Energy is transferred, not lost,” he whispered.  


“That’s right,” said Colress. He leaned forward slowly, hesitant at first. But Faba didn’t shy away this time, the fear was gone, the anger was gone--burnt out and burned away, leaving something else instead. There was hope. There was...

Colress let go of his hands and looked him in the eyes--it was a brief exchange, sea-glass blue and polished gold--dancing the most sacred of dances, undefined, undemanding, undying. Faba felt his waist being pulled in, gently, and he folded his arms around Colress. Their foreheads touched, and then their lips touched, and he’d begun to burn again on the inside, but these fires were warm and brought to life with another kind of feeling.

That thing was called love, and he had refused to name it, to know it before--but it was different now. And as he held Colress and Colress held him, and they kissed each other in the dark and in the light, Faba noticed something remarkable around them.  


The wind, ever slightly, shifted to the east. Out of sight, somewhere on the shore, the tide was creeping slowly back in. The sky was turning, the temperature was falling, time was always flying, taking everything, finding subtle ways to survive. And Colress, once a stranger to him and to Alola, was now dipping him towards the ground and kissing every corner of his mouth, and being kissed repeatedly back.  


But that was the fate of all things. They change.  


Faba supposed, sometimes, that wasn’t so bad after all.  


**Author's Note:**

> _This is dedicate to all the lovely people on the researchethic discord server. Whenever you are doubting yourself, when you feel afraid, or forgotten, or down, please remember you are not alone._   
>  _You have given me the gift of hope again, and of kindness, which I will never forget. This story is for all of you, a small token of my thanks, for all that you have done._


End file.
